Persona 4... an RPG that I might like?
By Dalai 2 Comments
Yet there's another reason why the Endurance Run has been great and that's the game itself. My view of the entire RPG genre has not changed since I was still rocking my copy of Dragon Warrior on the NES. I simply don't give a shit about them. It's not like I didn't give them a chance. I played a bunch of Dragon Warrior (Quest) and it was alright. Nothing fancy, but whatever. I got it free thanks to Nintendo Power. I also had the original Final Fantasy and I just couldn't get into it. Fine game, but I realized that RPGs at the time were all pretty much the same and the whole Medieval thing was dull and boring. Earthbound was really the only exception to the rule... and to some lesser extent, the Paper Mario series even though I can't get hooked to any of the Paper Mario games, either.
Where am I getting at here? I simply don't like RPGs in general. And it's not the gameplay that's the issue. For me, the RPG is mainly a story-driven genre and if the premise doesn't interest me, I just can't play it. The problem is that every story is essentially the same and set in the same pseudo-Medieval world with spiky-haired man-children or some futuristic space world starring a dude built like a tank and wearing armor made out of tanks... or a weird combination of both. RPGs like Earthbound and The World Ends With You that don't follow the traditional mold are far and few between.
What does this have to do with Persona 4? Well, after watching over 30 Endurance Run videos, I'm finding myself actually liking a RPG for the first time in years. I guess I could now say the same with Persona 3, but I shrugged it off as yet another RPG. There's just something strange about seeing a RPG with this unique story and setting. The action itself seems like pretty standard stuff: attack, guard, magic, eat food for health, blah blah blah. It's really about the other stuff: jobs, clubs, hanging with friends, typical high school activities. It's a little wacky and totally Japanese, but not too Japanese. It really looks like the whole package, but for some reason I feel like I'd have more fun watching the Endurance Runs than playing it myself. If I had a PS2, I'd definitely snatch this one up and maybe check out the previous games just for the hell of it.
So... I like Persona 4 despite not playing it myself. Strange but true. What I'd like to see in the future is a developer taking a risk and making an RPG that actually involves more real life scenarios while building a fantasy world around that. Basically, I want another Earthbound or Persona 4 like game. Get to work, Atlus. You guys seem to do good work.